A Global Day of Giving! #GivingTuesday

A Global Day of Giving! #GivingTuesday

Giving Tuesday was created to transform how people think about, talk about and participate in the giving season. It has become an international movement around the holidays dedicated to giving, in the same way that Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now synonymous with holiday shopping.

After the frenzied commercialism of Black Friday sales (that now last through the weekend) and the inundation of Cyber Monday e-mails, Giving Tuesday provides a way to make sure we give as good as we get.

Giving Tuesday has become an international phenomenon, and for North Americans it’s an opportunity to harness all of the grateful energy amassed over Thanksgiving and transform it directly into the spirit of helping others.  It feels like this year more than ever we are reminded that family, good health, a place to call home, security, access to clean water, and food to eat are not things to be taken for granted.  If you are reading this chances are that you have the good fortune to live in a place where food security, education, and housing are the norm. It is basic humanity to extend a hand if we can and there are so many positive ways to give back, and celebrate the true meaning of “The Giving Season”.

Here are a few organizations doubling donations today and working to make the world a better place on #GivingTuesday:

Heifer Project International

What We Do – Heifer International from Heifer International on Vimeo.

African Wildlife Foundation

The African Wildlife Foundation is having a GivingTwos-day! Donations will be doubled today and these animals need our help!

Shot@Life

Shot At Life – UNF, Honduras, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Photo Credit: Stuart Ramson

One of the greatest investments we can make in global health is to vaccinate children against vaccine preventable diseases. The impact is undeniable as demonstrated in this Impact Report by Shot@life.

MAM, has agreed to match all donations dollar-for-dollar to shot@life this #GivingTuesday and Facebook and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have teamed up to match up to $2 million in funds for nonprofits. To have your donation to Shot@Life matched, donate through Shot@Life’s Facebook Page.

WaterAid

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Atalay

Water is life, plain and simple. This #GivingTuesday is an opportunity to double your impact an provide clean water to families and villages around the world who do not have something most of us take for granted. Clean water.

Save The Children

Children are our future and often the innocent victims in man-made conflicts and natural disasters alike.

Photo Credit: Save The Children/ Victoria Zegler

Happy Giving! What other organizations you are supporting this Giving Tuesday? Please let us know!

This is an original post written for World Moms Network by Elizabeth Atalay.

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Elizabeth Atalay

Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.

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SOCIAL GOOD: See The Future Unfold With Save The Children

SOCIAL GOOD: See The Future Unfold With Save The Children

imageFrom the time I knew that I was pregnant, I was doing things to nurture my child’s development: I sang to him, placed speakers on my belly so he could hear classical music, narrated my day and what the world looked like “on the outside,”

My son’s first read-aloud started the day he arrived home from the hospital- a beautiful book entitled The Day You Were Born, and 8 years later, it is still one of his favorite read aloud stories.

He and I played games together, built blocks, and crafted sand castles. When he could finally walk, we zoomed around the house like explorers visiting outer-space.

I did all the things that my uber-aware-parenting -set were advised to do. Read, Talk, Sing, Play. Again and again, each day: Read, Talk, Sing, Play. And then it was time to send him off to school, where he would be doing more of the same to support his rapidly developing mind.

I well recall that feeling when I first sent my son into the preschool classroom environment. It was such an exciting time, and one also filled with questions: Will he feel secure? Will the teachers look after him as I would? Will he settle in and make friends? Will he rest when he is supposed to?

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Around the globe, many parents have just had this “first time into school experience.” This time- the first time in school- is seen as the formal beginning of our child’s education, where they will lay the foundation for their learning and schooling for the years to come. What studies have shown us, however, is that the foundation is laid well before our children walk through the classroom doors; the foundation begins as soon as our children are brought into the world.

Research shows us that a child’s brain is 90% developed BEFORE they are 5 years old. That is an incredibly high percentage, which shows us that the things we do at home before our children enter school can determine their early success.

My son was lucky, he had a well-informed (teacher) mom who knew the importance of a language rich home. Many children do not have this advantage. As a result, many children enter school at a deficit, a deficit which, as outlined by Save the Children can have a long-term impact on a child’s life.

As stated by Save the Children:

…if children do not have caring individuals reading, talking and playing with them regularly; access to quality preschool that enhances these skills; and social and emotional development to help them understand how to interact and play with others, they will be behind before they even start. In fact, children living in poverty in the United States and around the world, are not getting the support they need during these early stages of development.

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As a mother, teacher, and citizen of the world, these numbers are frightening and unacceptable. They are also heartbreaking. They don’t need to be the case, and Save the Children is on a mission to change this through their See the Future Unfold campaign.

There are many things that can be done to help close this deficit, beginning with simple home intervention plans such as Read, Talk, Sing, Play. This initiative strives to partner with parents, and educate them about the importance of a language rich home where children have the benefits of these simple, but important, developmental opportunities.

But in order for a child to be read to, a family must have access to books. And this is where the World Moms’ Blog community can step in. Together, we can support Save the Children’s initiatives today by making a small donation to their cause. Money raised will help provide books to children, as well as support the efforts for early intervention in poverty-stricken areas.

At this moment, WMB has 4,644 followers on our Facebook page. Imagine if each of us gave just $3 towards buying books for children. That would be enough to provide 4, 644 children with their first book. Can you image how precious that would be for a mother who cannot provide for her child? I know my Son’s first book- The Day you Were Born, means the world to us.

verticle copyI’m donating as soon as I finish this post. Will you join me?

 

To participate, and to see how a donation can change a child’s furture, visit the Save the Children website.

 

 

 

What is your favorite children’s book that you read with your own child?

This is an original post written by Erin Threlfall for World Moms Blog.

 

Erin M. Threlfall

Originally from the US, Erin has credited her intense wanderlust and desire to live around the globe to her nomadic childhood. Every two to three years, her father’s work with a large international company provided the opportunity to know a different part of the US (VA, OH, PA, GA, SC, NY) and eventually Europe (Germany and Italy) and Asia (Thailand and Japan). Though her parents and siblings finally settled down in the heartland of America, Erin kept the suitcases in action and has called Ghana, South Korea, Togo, Bali, and now New York home. Single Mom to a fabulous seven-year-old citizen of the world, she is an educator and theatre artist who is fascinated with world cultures and artistic practices. Her big dream is to some day open a school focused on well-being and inquiry based learning to meet the needs of all her learners. In the meantime, Erin and her Little Man Edem, plan to keep investigating theatre and influencing education, one continent at a time. You can read some of her ramblings and perhaps find the common thread by checking our her personal blog, telling all about This Life http://www.erinmthrelfall.com/

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United Arab Emirates: Saving the Children… from position 33?

United Arab Emirates: Saving the Children… from position 33?

Save The Children

Save The Children

There are some causes that are tricky to rally people around: not everyone wants to ban fur coats, for instance; not everyone thinks that restaurants should post calorie counts on their menus. There are other causes, though, that seem pretty much no-brainers: access to clean water, for instance. Is anyone really going to say “yeah, dirty water, I’m a big fan!” Or saving children. Is anyone really going to say (publicly, anyway) that it’s not a good idea to save children?

Even if we all agree that children should be saved, however, we know that all over the world there are children who need saving, in places where governments and infrastructure don’t seem capable of doing what needs to be done. That’s where organizations like Save the Children step in: they help stitch together the services that can help families survive and give governments a much needed hand.

Save the Children came out with its annual “State of the World’s Mothers” list, which uses five metrics to determine where it’s good to be a mother (and a child). The metrics – maternal health, children’s well-being, educational status (of mothers), economic status, and political status— are combined to give an overall score, which determines where a country falls on the list. Of 179 countries, there are the usual suspects at the bottom of the list—countries where war, natural disasters, and poverty combine in a perfect storm of catastrophe: places like Haiti, or Sudan, or Pakistan.

But there are surprises, too, like the fact that the United States doesn’t even crack the top twenty. Nope, the good ol’ US of A pulls in at 33.

Thirty-third in the world, for a country whose overall wealth and education trumps pretty much everywhere else. The US was beaten by, among others, Slovenia, Belarus, Croatia, and the Czech Republic, as well as all those Scandinavian countries that consistently outperform everyone else when it comes to quality of life issues.

You know what most of these places have that the US does not? A significantly higher percentage of women in government. I suppose a statistician would say that fact is not causal but correlative, and I’m sure that some people would insist that just having women in government won’t automatically make things better for women and children (and thus society), but maybe we should try, and then see what happens?

I live at the moment in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, another wealthy country that doesn’t crack the top twenty on this list. I suppose that for many Westerners, it might seem impossible any Middle Eastern country would score well on a list having to do with women’s lives, but the statistics on this list might help defuse those stereotypes. According to this index, 17.5% of seats in UAE government organizations are held by women, compared to 19.5% in the US; in terms of lifetime risk of maternal death, it is better to be a woman in the UAE: 1 in 5800 versus 1 in 1800 in the US. Women in the US average about 16 years of schooling, women in the UAE about 13; and women in the US tend to be wealthier than women in the UAE (53K for the US, 38K for the UAE).

The Save the Children list doesn’t index maternity leave policy, but that offers another interesting point of comparison.

Women in the UAE only receive 45 days of maternity leave, which isn’t enough, obviously, as any woman who has given birth understands. Women in the US get twelve weeks of maternity leave (although I had to call it “disability” leave in order to ensure that I got the requisite number of days). Twelve weeks, that is, of unpaid leave. John Oliver brilliantly skewered this policy on Mother’s Day, pointing out that the United States aligns with Papua, New Guinea, as the only two countries in the world with no paid parental leave policy. In the UAE, if a woman has a medical certificate that attests to her need for more time at home, she can take up to 100 days of additional (unpaid) leave.

Organizations like Save the Children do invaluable, back-breaking work among desperate populations, but their work raises a question that those of us who live with more privilege should be asking–loudly–of ourselves and our communities: why aren’t we all tied for first place? What has to happen to force “resource-rich” countries take care of its most vulnerable citizens? Why aren’t we doing better?

Where does your country rank in this list? And how do you think your country can do better? Any thoughts?

This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Deborah Quinn in the United Arab Emirates of “Mannahattamamma.”

Photo credit to ‘Save The Children’.

Mannahattamamma (UAE)

After twenty-plus years in Manhattan, Deborah Quinn and her family moved to Abu Dhabi (in the United Arab Emirates), where she spends a great deal of time driving her sons back and forth to soccer practice. She writes about travel, politics, feminism, education, and the absurdities of living in a place where temperatures regularly go above 110F.
Deborah can also be found on her blog, Mannahattamamma.

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Release of 2015 State of the World’s Mothers Report by @SaveTheChildren #sowm #worldmoms #MomsMatter

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Release of 2015 State of the World’s Mothers Report by @SaveTheChildren #sowm #worldmoms #MomsMatter

Photo credit to Save the Children.

Family living in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

Last week, World Moms Blog conducted an exclusive interview with Save the Children’s President and CEO, Carolyn Miles and Vice President of Global Health, Robert Clay at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Our conversation was around the State of the World’s Mothers Report for 2015, released today! Carolyn had recently returned from Haiti, and was enthusiastic to speak about this year’s findings…

Jennifer Burden: The State of the World’s Mothers Report now covers 179 countries, how many years has it existed?

Carolyn Miles: This is the 16th report, and I have been with Save the Children for 17 years. It came about as a connection between the well-being of mothers and children around the world. The report measures the well-being based on 5 indicators: economic, education, maternal health, child survival and the representation of women in government.

JB: The theme of the report in 2015 seems to focus on urban areas. Save the Children is pulling apart statistical averages in cities. Why?

CM: It is driven by getting to the hardest to reach children. Seventeen thousand children die per day. That has halved from 33,000 since 1990. We are answering the question of, “Where are the hardest to reach children?” And the cities are where the world’s population is going. In 2007 there were 51% of people on the planet living in cities. Today that number is 54%, and the city population is rapidly increasing. Cities are where the children, mothers and parents are living.

Families move to the cities looking for a better life, but in the poorest areas, the urban slums, children there are 2 times as likely to die than the richest kids in the same city.

If you look at the averages, the averages in cities are generally better than in rural areas. But, if you break it down, the poorest kids in cities are 2 times as likely to die as the richest kids in cities. And, those kids are also more likely to die than children in the rural areas.

JB: The urban data — when we think of child survival rates and socioeconomic disparities, most may think of cities such as Kampala, Delhi or Rio, but the report hits home, here, in the U.S. Can you tell us about Washington, D.C.?

CM: Yes, we looked at 25 capital cities in high income countries and the infant mortalities, including the deaths of infants under the age of one. Washington, D.C. was at the bottom. When we compared the wealthiest district and the one with the most poverty, children in the district with the most poverty were 10 times more likely to die than children from the wealthiest district.

Inequality is an important issue in the United States.

Urbanization in 2030 is expected to account for 65% of the population and to further increase in 2050.

Also, a key point is that the data is weak. We are looking at the DHS infant mortality rates, and the world needs to do a better job in accounting for this data.

JB: What was the biggest surprise this year?

CM: It was no surprise that the Scandanavians are always at the top. If we really want mothers and children to have a better life, we should support them.

To give a really specific answer, inequality is killing kids.

I just returned from Haiti 2 days ago. Haiti is in the bottom 10 and hasn’t been there in a long time. Number 1, the country has a very low education rate. Fifty percent of children do not get through primary school. Number 2, the decreased strength in the government slowed progress. I met with a bunch of moms and babies who are getting very basic healthcare, but more has to be done.

(Haiti is tied at number 169 with Sierra Leone in the 2015 Mothers Index Rankings and was just shy of the bottom 10 at number 168 last year in the 2014 Mothers Index Rankings.)

JB: What was the biggest success story?

CM: Panama made a lot of progress this year and has moved up in the rankings. This was driven by education and improvements in the representation of women in their government.

(Panama moved up to number 78 in the 2015 Mothers Index Rankings. That is a jump of 31 spots, from a ranking of number 109 in the 2014 Mothers Index Rankings.)

JB: As I read in the report, Carolyn, you have an interesting “World Mom Moment” that led you to leave the corporate world and work for Save the Children. (According to the State of the World’s Mothers Report 2015, Carolyn was in Manila holding her 6 month old son 20 years ago, and she felt that it wasn’t right that children she saw in poverty would have a very different chance at life than her son. It was that experience that led her to leave the corporate world and join Save the Children.) So, on World Moms Blog, we always ask, “What is your wish for world mothers?”

CM: Yes, I did, in Manila while holding my son when he was a baby! My wish is mostly that every mother has the basics: basic healthcare, that their children can go to school, and in conflict countries that moms and children are protected.

JB: What is the one action you would like us to take and encourage our World Moms Blog community to take to help mothers and children worldwide?

CM: Just one? (laughter) Please go to the Save the Children Web Site!

1) Donate to the programs — there are many choices!

2) Save the Children has a policy ask. To press the US government, a world leader in child and maternal health, to pass the Coons, Graham and Cardin Bill to support global maternal and child health programs. We must keep pushing.

3) In the new UN Goals there is a big focus in inequality. We think that is REALLY important that we ask that these goals are supported in order to reach the most deprived kid. These are the goals that every country will sign off on.

Photo credit to Save the Children.

Photo credit to Save the Children.

JB: Next, we have fielded some questions from our World Moms Blog contributors. First, Cindy Levin, the Anti-Poverty Mom in Missouri, USA asks, “What is the biggest area of opportunity to save kids lives this year…vaccines? nutrition?”

CM: It is hard to pick one. This year it’s important to get the new goals right, and we’re pushing for children to be central to them. In 1980 that is how things were done — one goal would be focused on. But when you only have a vertical lens, you’re not taking advantage of the integration of services.

Now, the focus is on smart integration to meet the demands of the children.

For example, in Nepal, the focus is on nutrition, as well as, water and sanitation. If a child is getting proper nutrition, but is drinking dirty water, then they are going to get sick and the nutrition alone won’t help. They have to work together.

JB: Next, our contributor, Kristyn Zalota of Cleanbirth.org in Connecticut, USA asks, “The largest obstacle moms in Southern Laos have to reaching a clinic is distance and lack of transportation. How common an obstacle is this for women worldwide?”

CM: Very common. Transport is a big barrier for women worldwide. Some of the solutions we are using are to construct mother homes next to clinics to decrease the distance, and her family can join her, like a birthing hut system. Another way to get the pregnant mother to the clinic is by ambulance. We line up the ambulances ahead of time in anticipation of the birth. For example, in Uganda, bicycle ambulances are used, and they have a sled in the back for the mother.

JB: Lastly, Maryanne Waweru-Wanyama of Mummy Tales in Kenya asks, “In societies that are very patriarchal and in communities that still uphold retrogressive cultures (this is so in many African cultures), where a woman’s reproductive health decisions are dictated by men (fathers, husbands, brothers, etc.), how is Save the Children working with men in this regard? Any examples?”

CM: This is a really important question. I’ll give you an example in Uganda, where there are lots of family planning clinics available that are supported by the government. But yet, we found that not all mothers were using them because they had not gotten permission from their husbands. So, sometimes access is not the problem.

Save the Children is encouraging and having “family discussions”, a way of bringing men into the discussions. We give them stats, economics, etc. that leads to the the better health of children and family spacing.

Robert Clay: Save the Children also works with adolescents on this topic. We are bringing boys and girls into the discussions before they are having children, and we talk to them about their roles and responsibilities.

Another example of how I have seen this work is through my prior work with USAID. We had soccer games for the boys with an additional afternoon discussion around sexuality. At the beginning, most of the boys only wanted to play soccer and made it clear that was what they preferred to do. Many were hearing for the first time factual information about sex, their roles as men and how to establish responsibility early on. Then, as they attended more discussions, the boys spoke of their preference to spend more time in the discussions than playing soccer!

Additionally, there is a women in government piece to this question. Societies with more women in decision making roles pass policies that are friendly to women and children. And when it comes to economics, when women have money they invest in their children.

Thank you to both Caroline Miles and Robert Clay for this exclusive interview. After the interview, there was a press conference at UN Headquarters including information on the 2015 State of the World Mothers Report. Look out for a follow up post on WorldMomsBlog.com about the press conference.

This is an original post to World Moms Blog by founder, Jennifer Burden of New Jersey, USA. 

Updated May 5th, 2015. Carolyn had her “World Mom Moment” in Manila, not Hong Kong, as previously stated. 

 

Jennifer Burden, Founder of World Moms Blog with Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children at the United Nations, April 30, 2015.

Jennifer Burden, Founder of World Moms Blog with Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children at the United Nations, April 30, 2015.

Jennifer Burden

Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India. She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls. Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.

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WORLD VOICE: #WorldMoms Attend NYC Preview with @SaveTheChildren for @APathAppears Airing Over 3 Nights

WORLD VOICE: #WorldMoms Attend NYC Preview with @SaveTheChildren for @APathAppears Airing Over 3 Nights

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#WorldMoms were thrilled to be invited by Save The Children to the preview screening and discussion of the new Documentary A Path Appears, Executive Produced and Directed by Maro Chermayeff, this past Thursday in New York City. The film is based on the book by the same title by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalists Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof.  World Moms Founder Jennifer Burden, Senior Editors Kyla P’an and Elizabeth Atalay, and special contributors Maria Mostajo and Polly Palumbo attended the event held at the New York Historical Society.  A Path Appears will air in the USA on PBS three Mondays in a row, starting tonight.

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The first segment that airs tonight focuses on sex trafficking in the United States and uncovers the raw truth of its prevalence and pervasiveness in American society today. An estimated 300,000 children are at risk of being trafficked into sexual slavery, and according to Nicholas Kristof a startling 10% of men in the USA buy sex online. The film points out the sad fact that most of the victims of sex trafficking are runaways, and the reality that often when a low income kid goes missing the first ones looking for them are the pimps. This powerful film gives a truly eye opening, and heart sinking look into the reality of the varied demographics  involved in the human trafficking industry in this country, and highlights the need to prosecute the pimps and Johns perpetuating the industry, instead of the prostitutes who are actually the victims in it all.

As part of the Women and Girls Lead initiative, through heartrending, inspiring storytelling A Path Appears will take viewers on a journey across the globe, to drive home the universality of gender inequality and the roots of vulnerability. The series will lead viewers to a deeper understanding of these critical issues and the proven methods of bringing about change.-PBS Independent Lens

Save The Children, our hosts of last Thursday’s event, and one of the sponsors of the program, kicks off the film’s 2nd episode, “Breaking the Cycle of Poverty,” which will air next Monday, Feb. 2 at 10 pm on PBS.  That episode will feature Save The Children’s early education program that we covered on World Moms Blog in an interview with Save The Children Artist Ambassador, Jennifer Garner in 2014. In the film Nicholas Kristof travels to West Virginia with Jennifer Garner to report first hand on the home visits that are so effective in literacy early intervention.

Early education is the best investment to break the cycle of poverty in America. All children deserve the chance to succeed in school and life. — Save The Children

Save The Children’s call to action is to sponsor a U.S. child which helps to provide home visits to pregnant moms, infants and toddlers, and elementary school literacy programs in some of the poorest, most isolated communities the nation.  The earlier we reach children the better, and in fact, research shows that reaching babies under the age of 2 has the greatest affect on high school graduation rates and crime according to the book, “A Path Appears” by Kristof and WuDunn. The types of visitation programs that Save the Children provides for mothers of babies under 2 years old are underfunded, yet breaking the cycle and teaching mothers how to read to their children, and interact with their babies emotionally, is proven to be effective.

The third episode will take viewers into the largest urban slum on the continent of Africa, Kibera in Kenya. There viewers see the amazing story of transformation inspired by a man who grew up in Kibera, and founded Shining Hope community programs and a school for girls with his wife. The positive impact of which is rippling through the community.

We hope you will join us in watching this important documentary series, and that the world is inspired to action by the powerful stories told within.

Wor

World Moms founder Jennifer Burden at the event with Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Senior Editor, Elizabeth Atalay of Documama.

Photo credits to World Moms Blog and A Path Appears. 

Elizabeth Atalay

Elizabeth Atalay is a Digital Media Producer, Managing Editor at World Moms Network, and a Social Media Manager. She was a 2015 United Nations Foundation Social Good Fellow, and traveled to Ethiopia as an International Reporting Project New Media Fellow to report on newborn health in 2014. On her personal blog, Documama.org, she uses digital media as a new medium for her background as a documentarian. After having worked on Feature Films and Television series for FOX, NBC, MGM, Columbia Pictures, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, and Castle Rock Pictures, she studied documentary filmmaking and anthropology earning a Masters degree in Media Studies from The New School in New York. Since becoming a Digital Media Producer she has worked on social media campaigns for non-profits such as Save The Children, WaterAid, ONE.org, UNICEF, United Nations Foundation, Edesia, World Pulse, American Heart Association, and The Gates Foundation. Her writing has also been featured on ONE.org, Johnson & Johnson’s BabyCenter.com, EnoughProject.org, GaviAlliance.org, and Worldmomsnetwork.com. Elizabeth has traveled to 70 countries around the world, most recently to Haiti with Artisan Business Network to visit artisans in partnership with Macy’s Heart of Haiti line, which provides sustainable income to Haitian artisans. Elizabeth lives in New England with her husband and four children.

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SPECIAL REPORT: Is Your Family Prepared for Disaster? With @SaveTheChildren

SPECIAL REPORT: Is Your Family Prepared for Disaster? With @SaveTheChildren

Today was the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, which pummeled the east coast of the United States. Whether our #WorldMoms are reporting on Hurricane Sandy in the U.S.; Typhoon Typhoon Bopha or Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines; or the Christchurch Earthquake in New Zealand, globally, we are interconnected and have become very aware of the risk of natural disaster.

We are thankful that our friends from Save the Children tap us on the shoulder and remind us to share information with our global community about keeping our kids safe in the event of a disaster every year. Family Check List? Reunification Plan? We are busy helping with homework, changing diapers, researching universities, and we appreciate this much needed reminder!

This video really hits home. How do we know how to reunify with our children in the even disaster struck while they were at school? What is the school’s reunification plan? Have you asked for it?

 

TIP!: Not feeling in the mood to prepare today? Here is something to watch NOW to get you in the mood:

 

 TIP!: Tomorrow night at dinner, go over this Disaster Check List with your family!

ParentChecklist_Large 500

TIP!: #WorldMoms, Take the Pledge!

I pledge to protect children.

I will learn how to keep my kids and children in my community safe in emergencies.

I will share this information with my friends and family.

And I will take action to prepare my home and community.

I appeal to my government to take action, too.

So when disaster strikes, together we’ll be ready and our children can be safe.

Head on over to Save the Children for more information, and to sign up to take the pledge!

We may remember to go for our annual mammogram or OB visit, but let’s not forget the annual check-in for our strategy to protect our little ones if disaster strikes. Join me in printing out that checklist, #WorldMoms!

Do you have any tips for our community about being prepared in the event of emergency? Please share them with us!

 

This is an original post to World Moms Blog by founder, Jennifer Burden, of New Jersey, USA.

Photo credits to Save the Children.

Jennifer Burden

Jennifer Burden is the Founder and CEO of World Moms Network, an award winning website on global motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. World Moms Network writes from over 30 countries, has over 70 contributors and was listed by Forbes as one of the “Best 100 Websites for Women”, named a “must read” by The New York Times, and was recommended by The Times of India. She was also invited to Uganda to view UNICEF’s family health programs with Shot@Life and was previously named a “Global Influencer Fellow” and “Social Media Fellow” by the UN Foundation. Jennifer was invited to the White House twice, including as a nominated "Changemaker" for the State of the World Women Summit. She also participated in the One Campaign’s first AYA Summit on the topic of women and girl empowerment and organized and spoke on an international panel at the World Bank in Washington, DC on the importance of a universal education for all girls. Her writing has been featured by Baby Center, Huffington Post, ONE.org, the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life, and The Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists.” She is currently a candidate in Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs in the Executive Masters of Public Affairs program, where she hopes to further her study of global policies affecting women and girls. Jennifer can be found on Twitter @JenniferBurden.

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